a2a cloud vs OpenAI AgentKit for deploying AI agents
OpenAI's AgentKit and Agents SDK are a genuinely good way to build an agent — clean primitives for tools, handoffs, and guardrails on OpenAI's models. But building the agent and hosting it in production are different jobs. a2a cloud is the framework- and model-agnostic runtime: it deploys the agent, gives it a database and surfaces, and proves what it did.
Where OpenAI AgentKit is genuinely strong — and where a2a cloud is different.
A clean way to build on OpenAI
AgentKit and the Agents SDK give you well-designed building blocks — tool calls, agent handoffs, guardrails, and tracing — tightly integrated with OpenAI's models. If your stack is OpenAI-first and you want an ergonomic authoring experience, it's an excellent place to build.
Model-agnostic hosting with proof
a2a cloud hosts agents from any framework — the OpenAI Agents SDK, LangGraph, CrewAI, or custom — on any LLM, with a managed Postgres database, an MCP server, an OpenAPI gateway, a frontend, and auth from one `a2a deploy`. Authority is Ed25519-signed scoped grants, not raw API keys, and every run returns a signed, replayable receipt — with no single-vendor lock-in.
a2a cloud vs OpenAI AgentKit, dimension by dimension.
A fair comparison. Both columns are accurate as we understand the products today — the difference is what the runtime owns by default.
Pick the tool that matches the job.
Reach for OpenAI AgentKit when
- Your stack is OpenAI-first and you want its native authoring tools.
- You're building the agent's logic and will host it yourself.
- Tight integration with OpenAI models and traces is the priority.
Reach for a2a cloud when
- You want to deploy the agent — DB, MCP, API, frontend — not just build it.
- You need framework- and model-agnostic hosting with no vendor lock-in.
- You need scoped grants and signed receipts for governance and proof.
Trust the receipt.
a2a cloud deploys any agent — LangGraph, OpenAI Agents SDK, CrewAI, or custom — and ships it with a managed Postgres database, an MCP server, an API, a frontend, and an Ed25519-signed receipt for every run. Scoped grants, no ambient production access. One deploy, the whole agent app, with proof.